Johann Evangelist Reiter

Johann Evangelist Reiter (born April 1, 1764 in Weissenstein , reign of Rechberg ; † October 28, 1835 in Auernheim , Oberamt Heidenheim ) was a German Catholic priest and geometer , but also a fresco painter , sculptor , stonemason , musician and architect .

biography

Childhood and youth

Johann Evangelist Reiter was born during a solar eclipse in Weissenstein in today's district of Göppingen. His father was a tailor and his mother a seamstress. In his earliest youth he was asked to do all sorts of jobs, and since he was the firstborn, he had to look after his younger siblings as well.

He started school when he was seven. Writing and reading was easy for him, but he preferred to paint. He felt his penchant for music in his first school days. He wasn't satisfied with singing alone, so he learned to play the violin. As a tailor's apprentice, he went to farms with his father, but did not help with the tailoring, but marked and painted sacks and played with his violin for the servants and maids in the evenings, earning more than his father. He didn't like tailoring, so he tried to travel as a minstrel with his music.

At the age of 13 he was accepted into the Neresheim monastery as a choir boy. There he learned Latin and was introduced to the basics of science. During this time his mother died and his father, alone with his four siblings, was forced to marry again. In his spare time, young Johann tinkered puppets in the monastery, played puppet theater and learned to play the flute after he lost his alto voice in a broken voice as a choirboy.

Study and entry into the monastery

He began basic studies and then wanted to study music in Neuburg an der Donau , but was turned away there because he was a Swabian and therefore a foreigner.

Then the thought of entering the monastery germinated in him. So in 1782 he was admitted to the Neresheim monastery and in 1784 took his religious vows. In the following years he studied a. a. Logic, physics, metaphysics, mathematics, natural law and the Greek language. After completing the theological course, he was ordained a priest in 1788. Then he was employed as a professor of mathematics and practical geometry for the young monastery chaplains and had to take over the lower classes in the monastery high school.

The abbot later ordered him to practice his knowledge of geometry and sent him to the country to precisely measure the manorial lands and farms in order to renew the old sal and warehouse books. In summer he took quarters with the respective local pastors and in winter he made the necessary drawings, calculations and descriptions. This work was interrupted in 1796 when the French flooded the entire Härtsfeld during the war . The young Father Reiter was then given the caste office and, in 1799, the forest management and the wood office, offices which he administered until the prince of Thurn und Taxis took over the monastery in 1802 .

Dissolution of the monastery, time in large cake

In the following year, 1803, the monastery was closed and the clergy were given a pension. Napoleon dissolved all monasteries during this time and gave them away to local secular rulers; the Neresheim monastery was bequeathed to the Prince of Thurn und Taxis. The clergymen built a lyceum of their own free will for students who wanted to devote themselves mainly to camera science. Professor Reiter was assigned to the economics department and had to look after the entire staff, including the professors and students, around a hundred people. As a professor, he still had to give lectures on forest science, practical geometry, agriculture and civil architecture.

After the prince's death, this institution was closed. The young prince advised the professors to leave the monastery and to look for a new sphere of activity. Pastor Seckler in Großkuchen welcomed the homeless Father Reiter with pleasure, because he had already lived with him for two summers. He assigned him the pastoration of the “branch” of small cake to “practice pastoral work”.

Time in Auernheim

On July 11, 1807, Reiter took over the position of "early knife" in Dischingen , until he, after the death of the Auernheim pastor Johann Nepomuk Dempf, on September 27, 1807 at the suggestion of Sr. Fürstli. Your highness received the parish of Auernheim. On October 6th, he was picked up in Dischingen as the new Auernheim pastor in a "Schaisse", pulled by two white horses and accompanied by 18 riders. To his great surprise, his father, sister and two of his brothers arrived at the same time. The Auernheimers gave their new pastor a warm welcome.

What Pastor Reiter in Auernheim renewed and moved in the years to come, up to his death in 1835, was a blessing for the whole community. First he made some changes in the church, painted the side altars himself, freshened up the wooden figures of St. Wendelin and St. Sebastian (see St. Georg Auernheim ) and made new candlesticks for the high altar. He acquired the Würzburg, Konstanz and Tübingen hymns in order to improve church music, make the church service “generally more edifying” and “enable the people to participate more actively”. For the organ choir he wrote his own book with sermon and Christian teaching songs, German masses and Vespers as well as Sunday, holiday and occasional songs. Most of all it was important to him to make the devotions or other occasional church services clearer and easier to understand, "in order to keep the people in a salutary attention, and thus to achieve an unusual and charming change".

In order to be generally understandable, he held all afternoon services in German, "to awaken something that the zeitgeist so urgently required". He was encouraged by Father Nack, a former Benedictine from Neresheim, then pastor in Druisheim , to follow his example and introduce such innovations. However, he later advised against it again because he had received a reprimand from the Augsburg Ordinariate . Despite a fraternal warning, Pastor Reiter not only held all afternoon and extraordinary services in German, but also read the epistle and the Gospel in German during mass , following the instructions of the Tübingen hymn book and a new ritual for the Diocese of Constance . He also agreed to the Gloria and Credo in German.

Pastor Reiter was versatile. He painted some frescoes in St. George's Church (which are no longer there), made two new choir flags, painted a new dial for the church clock, wrote plays and once performed the opera of Kotzebue “The Hermit” at the “Lichten Gemeinde” von Formentara ”, whereby the actors all came from the village, only the orchestra was reinforced by two Neresheimers. Mention should also be made of the construction of a new organ → in 1823 according to Pastor Reiter's plan, as well as the new school building in 1832, for which he laid the foundation stone himself.